Chapter 286: As Long As You're Alive, You Will Lose Everything!
"This feeling... it feels exactly like the island of God Valley," Kuma murmured, his usually calm expression tightening.
Kuma wasn't entirely certain if his instinct was accurate; it was merely a profound, subconscious resonance. However, the moment he spoke that specific name, Ginny froze in shock.
She possessed horrifyingly vivid memories of that place. An island that had nearly stolen her life and the lives of everyone she loved wasn't something easily forgotten.
"God Valley?" Ginny frowned, staring into the fog. "How could it possibly be that place? That island was completely wiped off the map decades ago."
"I remember that being the case as well," Kuma replied slowly. "But... there are unmistakable similarities."
"Don't overthink it. We'll find out soon enough," Luna interjected, gripping the railing. "That island—or rather, that massive ship—is heading straight for us."
Because the bizarre sensation was somehow linked to God Valley, Ginny and Kuma mutually agreed they needed to investigate.
As the colossal silhouette pierced through the dense fog, its true form was revealed. It was Gecko Moria's massive flagship—Thriller Bark.
Years ago, after suffering a completely one-sided, catastrophic defeat at the hands of Kaido in Wano Country, Moria had lost absolutely everything. Aside from the stolen corpse of the legendary Samurai Ryuma and the Black Blade Shusui, he hadn't managed to salvage a single thing from that slaughter.
His beloved crew, his former ship, his burning ambitions—all of it had been violently annihilated in the snow.
A broken, hollow shell of a man, Moria had fled back to the West Blue. By pure coincidence, he had stumbled upon the shattered, floating remnants of God Valley. Using his remaining resources, he had aggressively reconstructed the massive island fragment into a colossal, fortress-like island ship.
Subsequently, he had retreated into the perpetual gloom of the Florian Triangle. Using the suffocating fog as an impenetrable cloak, he began obsessively cultivating an immortal Zombie Army.
Of the seven primary navigation routes in the first half of the Grand Line, the route passing through the Florian Triangle had the absolute highest mortality rate. This was simply because there were two terrifying monsters lurking in the mist.
One was Harald, the King of Elbaf, whose colossal size and overwhelming Haki meant encountering him was an immediate, one-way ticket to Davy Jones's locker.
The other was Moria. Although he had degenerated into a depressed, lazy shut-in, dealing with rookie pirates traversing Paradise was still child's play for him.
Currently, Moria was lounging deep within the decaying halls of his central mansion, paying absolutely zero attention to whoever had wandered into his domain. It wasn't until a squad of zombie scouts franticly reported the "intruders" that he finally stirred.
"Master Moria! New intruders have breached the perimeter! They've already reached the graveyard!"
"Their combat power is absurdly high! The standard zombies are completely useless against them!"
Moria had been listening to the reports with half-lidded, utterly bored eyes. But upon hearing that the intruders possessed substantial combat strength, a spark of genuine interest finally flared in his gaze.
"Kishishishi... is that so? How wonderful! With the help of some truly powerful shadows... I'll be one step closer to my ultimate goal!" Moria cackled, lazily pushing himself up from his throne. "Deploy the General Zombies. I'll head out personally."
At this point in time, the total number of zombies aboard Thriller Bark was relatively small, and he didn't possess any bizarre, chimera-like monstrosities yet. His Zombie Army hadn't even been systematically numbered like in the original timeline.
The infamous genius surgeon, Dr. Hogback, hadn't joined Moria yet. Without Hogback's miraculous surgical expertise to perfectly stitch mismatched body parts together, Moria's corpse-modification process was agonizingly slow and crude. He was forced to rely strictly on relatively intact, naturally preserved corpses.
Meanwhile, in the island's expansive graveyard, heavily desiccated zombies were constantly clawing their way out of the dirt to ambush Kuma and the others.
The actual combat power of these standard zombies was pitiful. They couldn't inflict any meaningful damage on Kuma's crew. However, they were incredibly annoying to deal with.
Because they were already dead corpses animated by shadows, they possessed absolutely no concept of pain or death. Conventional combat tactics were highly inefficient. Even if someone casually decapitated one, the zombie would simply stumble around, pick its head back up, plop it back onto its shoulders, and continue attacking.
Currently, the crew's strategy was divided into two methods: either completely obliterate the zombies into absolute dust so they physically couldn't move, or let Kuma handle them.
Pop.
A crisp, popping sound echoed as Kuma casually slapped a lunging zombie with his bare hand. The zombie instantly collapsed, returning to a lifeless corpse as a bizarre, black, humanoid shadow violently expelled from its mouth and shot off into the sky, returning to its original owner.
"Is this place... actually haunted?!" a Mink sailor yelled, shivering.
BOOM!
Ginny casually aimed her massive 88mm cannon and fired at a zombie trying to flank her. The deafening roar of artillery echoed through the graveyard as the zombie was instantly vaporized into fine, bloody mist.
While the zombies could mindlessly ignore standard pistol bullets, when faced with military-grade, armor-piercing artillery, they were nothing more than fragile target practice.
"Be careful, everyone!" Ginny warned, chambering another massive round. "Do not let these things bite you! What if they carry some sort of contagious plague?!"
After her vampiric conversion, Ginny had voraciously read countless books on supernatural lore and vampire mythology. In many of those legends, zombies were highly infectious; a single bite could turn the victim into a rotting corpse.
Zzzt—CRACK!
With a flash of bright blue Electro, Luna effortlessly tore a zombie in half with her bare claws before violently shaking the putrid gore off her hands.
"Don't worry, they're just animated corpses," Luna said calmly. "They can't bite through our Haki or fur anyway. But... exactly how are they moving?"
While they were still trying to deduce the origin of the zombies, the surrounding horde of undead suddenly froze. As if receiving a unified command, they began rapidly retreating into the shadows.
A moment later, a completely different caliber of zombies stepped out from the dense forest. Compared to the withered, fragile corpses from the graveyard, these new arrivals were massively built, heavily armored, and radiated a distinctly sharper aura.
Ginny sighed in annoyance, ejecting her empty magazine and forcefully slamming a fresh drum into the cannon, clearly preparing to lay down a massive field of suppressive fire.
However, upon seeing the new zombies, Luna's expression instantly tightened, her fur standing on end.
"Everyone, maximum combat readiness! These guys are fundamentally different!"
"Huh?" Ginny blinked.
"I recognize those corpses..." Luna growled, her eyes narrowing dangerously. "The one holding the massive liquor bottle is Captain John. The heavily armored one behind him is the infamous smuggler, Wang Zhi. And the one with four arms is Silver Axe..."
Luna didn't suffer from face-blindness. Even though the corpses were heavily decayed and stitched together, they still fundamentally retained their original appearances. She recognized them instantly.
However, the legendary names she rattled off elicited absolutely zero reaction from Inuarashi and Nekomamushi.
"Who?"
"Are they supposed to be strong?"
It wasn't that the two Minks were ignorant of the sea's current geopolitical landscape; it was precisely because they focused on the present. They possessed very little historical knowledge regarding these ancient "historical figures" from decades past.
"Those guys... they were apex monsters from the exact same era as Captain Nereus," Luna explained grimly. "Rumor has it they all resided on Pirate Island. Back in the day, every single one of them was a terrifying powerhouse..."
Luna only knew these specific identities because she aggressively studied anything related to Nereus's past activities, which naturally led her to research the core members of the Rocks Pirates.
Luna was absolutely certain: if she hadn't misidentified them, they were about to face an incredibly brutal, desperate battle.
"Ginny!"
"Understood! The Air Door is prepped and ready! We can execute an emergency tactical retreat at any moment!"
While the Door-Door Fruit lacked the instantaneous, localized blinking speed of the Paw-Paw Fruit, it was infinitely more efficient for safely evacuating a large group of people into an untouchable pocket dimension.
As Ginny prepared the escape route, Kuma stepped forward and casually thrust his palm toward the legendary zombies.
Fwoosh—!
A massive, hyper-pressurized paw-print of condensed air violently erupted forward.
Luna braced herself for the zombies to effortlessly deflect or tank the attack. Instead, the supposedly "terrifying powerhouses" were instantly swept away like fragile bowling pins. They didn't even possess the baseline physical strength to remain standing against the shockwave; they were violently blown back into the forest.
"Uh... threat neutralized," Kuma said calmly, lowering his hand. "Luna, are you entirely certain you didn't misidentify them?"
"That's impossible," Luna muttered, genuinely bewildered. "That hairstyle, the distinct weapons... that was undeniably Captain John..."
Luna's memory was flawless, yet these zombies displayed absolutely none of the terrifying, overwhelming aura expected of New World legends. In fact, their combat power was practically identical to ordinary, low-level Marine fodder.
"Kishishishi! You truly are a capable and highly knowledgeable crew!"
Accompanied by a highly distinct, obnoxious cackle, a bizarrely proportioned figure—resembling a massive, walking onion—emerged from the shadows. Moria casually twirled a massive pair of heavy-duty scissors in his hands, his eyes practically gleaming with manic excitement.
It had been so long since he had encountered intruders with genuinely impressive combat power!
The fatal flaw of Moria's zombie creation process was that a corpse could never utilize its full, original combat strength. A zombie's actual fighting style and Haki proficiency were entirely dictated by the shadow Moria shoved into it.
If he managed to shove the shadow of a master swordsman into the corpse of a master swordsman, the resulting zombie would indeed be terrifyingly strong. But currently, Moria severely lacked perfectly compatible shadows and corpses.
Captain John and the others had undeniably been apex monsters in their prime, but their overwhelming strength had been intrinsically tied to their Devil Fruits and mastery of Haki.
After their deaths, Moria acquired their corpses, but their Devil Fruit abilities were gone, and corpses couldn't manifest Haki. Combined with the fact that Moria had shoved the shadows of completely average, weak pirates into them, they naturally possessed zero actual combat capability.
Compared to the frail graveyard zombies, their only redeeming quality was that their legendary corpses were physically far more durable.
"These zombies... you created them?" Kuma asked, his eyes narrowing slightly behind his glasses.
"Kishishishi! Exactly! And very soon, you will all become the newest additions to my army!" Moria cackled arrogantly. "Surrender your shadows to me willingly, and I promise I won't hold you accountable for destroying my lesser zombies! I'll even graciously allow you to live out the rest of your pathetic lives hiding safely in the dark!"
If the original owner of a shadow died, the shadow would instantly dissolve, and the zombie would perish. Therefore, Moria genuinely needed his victims to stay alive. It wasn't a lie.
However, his arrogant words triggered a profound, icy fury within Kuma.
Kuma possessed an inherently gentle, deeply pacifistic nature. If someone threw rocks at him in the street, he would likely just smile warmly, ignore the insult, and peacefully walk away.
But Kuma cherished his companions above all else. After sailing together for so long, he had forged deep, unbreakable bonds with Ginny and the rest of the crew. Hearing this bizarre onion-man casually threaten to violently mutilate and enslave his friends made Kuma's usually serene expression darken considerably.
"May I ask you a question?" Kuma asked, his voice deathly calm. "Why exactly did you turn this specific island into your ship?"
Kuma's tone was perfectly flat, completely devoid of any discernible anger. But anyone who truly knew Kuma understood that his current mood was exceptionally dangerous.
"Once you've become my loyal zombie, I'll gladly explain everything to you!" Moria sneered, raising his massive scissors.
Clack!
Moria casually snipped the air with his scissors. Kuma didn't say another word. He simply raised his right hand and gently tapped the palm of his left hand against his chest.
Pop.
Kuma instantly vanished from his original position. Before Moria could even register the movement, Kuma reappeared directly beside him, moving with absolute, untraceable instantaneous teleportation.
"Ursus Shock."
BOOM—!!!
If this had been the Moria from seven years ago—the fierce, ambitious warlord who had violently clashed with Kaido in Wano—he could have easily reacted and blocked the strike.
But the current Moria was a fundamentally broken, lazy shut-in. He couldn't even process Kuma's movement.
Accompanied by an apocalyptic, earth-shattering explosion, Moria was violently blasted point-blank. The sheer, overwhelming kinetic force of the paw-print violently drove Moria's massive body directly into the solid stone ground, perfectly embedding him into the crater like a jigsaw puzzle piece.
Although Crocodile and Moria had both suffered humiliating defeats due to rust, their underlying mentalities were completely different.
Crocodile had simply grown complacent from exclusively bullying weaklings in Paradise; a couple of brutal hits to the head were enough to violently shock him back to his senses.
Moria, however, was fundamentally broken on a psychological level. After watching his entire crew get slaughtered, he had succumbed to absolute despair and paranoia, completely losing the sharp, combative instincts of his youth.
"He... he was defeated?!"
"Amazing! The monster Moria actually got taken down!!"
"Wait... where are our shadows? Why haven't they returned to us yet?!"
From the surrounding gloomy forest, countless terrified victims who had their shadows stolen by Moria had been secretly observing the battle. Seeing Kuma effortlessly crush the warlord, they immediately erupted into ecstatic cheers.
Several victims even boldly rushed forward, enthusiastically explaining Moria's abilities and the island's situation to Luna and Ginny.
"Wait, so this guy... this fat onion who plays with corpses and enslaves people... he's one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea?!" Ginny asked, genuinely baffled.
"Are the Warlords really this pathetically weak?" Luna muttered in disbelief.
What a ridiculously weak Warlord. That was their immediate, unfiltered reaction.
Admittedly, the current Kuma was undeniably a monster. He possessed the absurd physical vitality of a Buccaneer, masterful proficiency in both types of Haki, and a top-tier, highly developed Paramecia Devil Fruit.
But for a globally recognized Warlord to be effortlessly one-shotted... it just felt fundamentally wrong.
"Careful! He hasn't been defeated yet!" Kuma suddenly warned.
Kuma noticed that the Moria he had violently embedded into the crater had completely dissolved into a flat, black silhouette.
"Doppelman!"
Despite his physical deterioration, the foundational mastery of his Devil Fruit remained. Moria hadn't actually taken the full brunt of the attack; at the very last microsecond, he had flawlessly swapped positions with his shadow, safely relocating to the edge of the clearing.
The massive, completely autonomous shadow suddenly flashed a terrifying, jagged grin at Kuma. It then instantly morphed into a razor-sharp, lethal spear of condensed darkness, shooting directly toward Ginny and Luna, who were casually chatting with the victims nearby.
"Tsuno-Tokage (Horned Lizard)!"
BAM!
With equal, blinding speed, Kuma didn't hesitate for a fraction of a second. He instantly teleported directly in front of Ginny, raising his hand and effortlessly deflecting the lethal shadow spear with his paw pad.
"Kuma, you're being overprotective!" Ginny chuckled, lightly punching his arm. "I'm not exactly weak anymore, you know!"
"I know," Kuma replied softly, his eyes locked on Moria. "Luna, please step back to a safe distance with the others. From here on out... this is a deeply personal grudge."
"Alright, alright, we're going," Luna smirked, grabbing Ginny's collar. "Your giant boyfriend wants to show off his protective side. Let him handle it."
Luna laughed, dragging a loudly protesting Ginny and the surrounding victims back toward the safety of the Door World, leaving Kuma with a massive, unobstructed battlefield.
Watching this display of absolute trust, Moria didn't press the attack. Instead, his face twisted into a mask of pure, venomous mockery.
"The bonds of friendship... what a beautiful, pathetic delusion! Do you honestly think you can show off your strength and protect them forever?!"
Moria could vividly sense the profound trust and emotional bond between Kuma and his crew. And it was precisely that beautiful camaraderie that violently triggered him.
It forcefully dredged up the agonizing memories of that snowy battlefield in Wano—the battle that had violently stripped away everything he had ever loved.
Moria's face was still bruised from Kuma's attack, but his expression warped into a horrifying, inhuman visage of absolute madness.
"They are ALIVE! And as long as you are alive, you will inevitably LOSE EVERYTHING! Do you understand?!" Moria shrieked, his voice cracking with manic despair.
"If they had just been mindless, immortal zombies from the very beginning... then I NEVER would have lost them!!"
While he appeared to be screaming at Kuma, he was frantically muttering to himself, his words dripping with broken, absolute insanity.
Moria fundamentally couldn't accept that these intruders possessed the very thing he had been violently denied.
Sensing their master's chaotic, violent mental state, the surrounding zombies began to panic. In the next instant, the shadows trapped within their decaying bodies began to violently boil, forcefully ripping themselves free from the corpses and rapidly converging toward Moria...
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